Assyrian Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII
From the archives of Time, Monday, August 12, 1940 and we present it to the readers with editing because it contained some false information.
08-08-2009
The first Patriarch in history to visit the U. S. docked in Manhattan last week, settled at the Gramercy Park Hotel. His Beatitude Eshai Mar Shimun, 119th Patriarch of Assyria and head of the Church of the East (which Westerners know as the Nestorian Church), had come to see his 70,000 fellow countrymen in the U. S., do something if possible for his persecuted brethren elsewhere. The Assyrian Christians have had a long record of persecution. They have been a minority in the mountains of Assyria and the plains of Syria and Iraq since Mohammedanism's rise.
Saint Thomas, the doubting Apostle, founded the Church of the East in the First Century. A great missionary church, it made millions of converts in distant India and China, then slowly dwindled.
Cambridge-educated, Mar Shimun also speaks perfect English. Unlike many a Patriarch, he has a short black beard instead of a long white one, is young (33) and good-looking. The Assyrian Patriarchate has been hereditary for 600 years, descends from uncle to nephew since no Patriarch marries.
